The train's operator saw them laying right there between the tracks and hit the brakes, but the subway didn't come to a full stop until two cars had passed over them. To the witnesses on the platform (most notably Autrey's young children), it appeared that the two men locked in a life or death man-hug had most likely been crushed.

But amazingly, they were alive. The train cleared the men by about two inches -- close enough that grease from the underside of the train stained Autrey's hat.

thegalleryofheroes
"Would I do it again? No way, I was dumb. That was my favorite hat."

Autrey was honored by every politician in the immediate area and showered with rewards, which included a trip to see Ellen DeGeneres and $10,000 directly from Donald Trump. Through it all, Autrey remained humble, and like Rocky in whatever sequel you're thinking of, he kind of grew disillusioned with the whole hero thing.

nymag
"Disillusionment" here bears a striking resemblance to "pimping."

She got all the way out and actually let go of the ledge, beginning her deadly free fall, when the strong, rough hands of Zhongfan snatched her out of the air.

nypost
And thus, an incredibly dangerous new fetish was born.

Miss Li struggled ironically against the cyborglike grip keeping her alive, but Zhongfan held fast, with a stern look of determination on his face that seemed to say "No way is this shit happening on my watch."

msnbc
He looks like he beat Death in a staring contest.

With the help of another man on the floor below pushing up on the bride's feet, Zhongfan pulled her back inside to safety. When he was interviewed later, Zhongfan merely said, "I did what anyone would have done." Which seems to suggest that showing up out of nowhere and rescuing people from the crushing weight of mortal despair is business as usual in his province. Actually, now that we mention it ...

The Clutch:

Lane lost his wife when she fell, or more likely jumped, off the East Sussex Cliffs. Beachy Head, as the cliffs are more commonly known, is a depressingly popular spot for people wanting to kill themselves, witnessing an estimated 20 suicides per year.

Wikipedia
"Well, I don't really want to kill myself ... but when am I going to be here again?"

Lane's wife, Maggie, had been one of those suicides in 2004. Since he couldn't save her, Lane began patrolling the cliffs daily, looking for other distraught souls at the end of their (proverbial) ropes.

Completely untrained in counseling, Lane has so far managed to prevent 29 people from leaping off the cliff. In his first year of punching suicide in the face, he received a Royal Humane Society Award for tackling a woman about to go over the edge, which sort of explains the "untrained in counseling" bit. More recently, he found another woman clinging to the cliff face about 15 feet down from the edge and actually climbed down to retrieve her, saving her life and earning a shitload of criticism from the local suicide prevention group, the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team (BHCT), because apparently they are unclear on the meaning of the word "prevention."

Getty
"Look, grown adults commit to things. You're just a big baby."

The BHCT claim that Lane's rogue suicide prevention efforts endanger the lives of the people trying to kill themselves. Whether he bought that argument or not, Lane has since scaled back his patrols from two to three times daily to once per day, because he didn't "like the confrontations," a phrase which here means "I don't have time for their ridiculous bullshit, I'm trying to save people from jumping off this here cliff."

The Sun
This man couldn't look more British if he was holding a tea kettle and wearing nothing but a Union Jack.

He'd only been performing as a dancer on the Costa Concordia for six months, which effectively made him more qualified than anyone else on board to lead the evacuation. Seeing the predicament the other passengers were facing, Thomas stretched one arm down to the life rafts while holding onto the rail of the deck above, allowing dozens of people to climb onto his shoulders and then down his body to the rafts.

That's right -- he turned himself into a human ladder, something that we're assuming isn't taught in any of the safety pamphlets they hand out when you get on the boat. And the next time you consider picking a fight with a dancer, keep this in mind: Thomas supported all of the weight of the climbing passengers with one freaking hand.

The Guardian
His strong, manly hand.

The Clutch:

In 1984, Augusto and Michaela Odone's 6-year-old son, Lorenzo, tested positive for adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a genetic disorder that attacks the brain. It strips vision, hearing, motor function and the ability to breathe or think. At the time of Lorenzo's diagnosis, there was nothing approaching a cure or even any type of available treatment. Augusto and his wife were essentially told that their son was going to die in less than two years and there was simply nothing to be done about it.

elblogalternativo
This is one of those rare situations where the real people were much more photogenic than their movie counterparts.

Augusto, with no background in the subject, read up on everything about ALD, spending entire nights in libraries, hoping to find something that the professionals devoted to researching the disease had somehow missed. All the while, his son continued to deteriorate.

But impossibly, Augusto made a discovery: The damage ALD caused in his son came from a buildup of long chain fatty acids in the blood. Years of no medical experience whatsoever told him that if he could somehow stop this from happening, it might help Lorenzo. He swiftly organized a medical conference (with doctors this time) to discuss his research, and came away with the exact thing he'd been looking for: an oil capable of destroying long chain fatty acids.

It had to be an oil, because Lorenzo's Suppository would've sold the wrong kind of tickets.

The treatment, a combination of rapeseed and olive oils, was given to Lorenzo, and remarkably, the heinous progress of the disease seemed to stop. It wasn't a cure, and it didn't repair the extensive damage already done to Lorenzo, but he was alive, and the disease spread no further.

But while there was nothing to be done about the damage little Lorenzo had already sustained, that wasn't true for future victims of the disease; studies indicate that it works to prevent the onset of ALD once it's been diagnosed but before symptoms have developed. A study completed in 2005 showed that the oil was successful in preventing the development of ALD in 83 out of 120 trial cases where it was diagnosed, which is a hell of a thing for some oil made by a desperate father with absolutely no medical background.

medicinalive

As for Lorenzo himself, he lived 20 years beyond doctors' expectations, finally succumbing to pneumonia, proving once again that doctors probably don't know anything. To lessen their shame, an honorary doctorate was given to Augusto so that the medical community could credit any other discoveries he made to a real doctor and not some random dude.